Most PDF password cracker tools fall in to one or more of three major categories: tools that recover the PDF user password, tools that recover the PDF owner password, and tools that remove the PDF owner password allowing full access to the PDF file. The majority of PDF password remover tools cost money but there are also plenty of free PDF password removal, recovery, and cracking programs and the best of them are listed below: Note: An individual PDF password removal tool might only support the cracking or removing of a password if it's of a certain kind, for a certain security level, encrypting a certain version of PDF, or may even have other restrictions. I'll call out any of those known limits below. 1.